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Good article with a brief history of how we got where we are today.

The People Problem: Abortion, The Family and Population Control
by Linda D. Bartlett

Doomsayers have been around a long time. In 1798, Thomas Malthus believed that man's ability to produce food would inevitably be outstripped by his ability to reproduce himself. He predicted starvation and economic collapse. Although Malthus was proven wrong, his predictions raised questions - questions which have allowed humanist and socialist thinkers to get their foot in the door.

In the early 1930's, Swedish social scientists, Alva and Gunnar Myrdal, made an extraordinary discovery. As advocates for socialism, modernity, feminism, and secularism, they did riot need to attack the family as an institution of oppression. They merely needed to redefine the family. No longer should the family be an autonomous social unit rooted in religion and tradition, but a "great national household," fully industrialized, where women stood by men as comrades in industrial labor and where children became a social responsibility. As the Myrdals put it, the population question could be transformed "into the most effective argument for a thorough and radical socialist remodeling of society."¹

In 1958, Richard L. Meier proposed that sterilization was the way to achieve the "revolution." By moving women into jobs that demanded geographic mobility, stable home and community lives would become impossible. Easy divorce, he added, would also facilitate more sterile marriages. The family model resting on marriage, motherhood and work in the home should be purposefully eroded.²

In 1966, Edward Pohlman looked in horror at the "Baby Boom" of the 1950's. He proposed that large families of three or more children should be redefined as the "flaunting" of the common good for "selfish ends."³

In 1968, Stanford University biologist Paul Erhlich predicted that hundreds of millions of persons would die of starvation worldwide and that the U.S. would have food rationing by the end of the 1970's. He predicted that by 1984, the U.S. would be dying of thirst. just like Malthus before him, Erhlich was proven wrong, but his theories are alive and well in the classroom. Tim Stafford was a student at Stanford when Erhlich's book, The Population Bomb, was published. He remembers his brother coming home from school to inform his parents that "they had sinned by having more than four children.⁴

Enter the 'lifeboat game," a common exercise in values clarification classrooms across the country. There are too many people in the world, students were told. Some people will have to "get out of the boat" in order to save the others.

In 1970, Frederick Jaffee, a Planned Parenthood vice president, offered the following proposal in order to provide the U.S. with specific ways to reduce its population growth rate: "encourage increased homosexuality...compulsory abortion for out-of-wedlock pregnancies...compulsory sterilization of all who have two children except for a few who would be allowed three...childbearing confined to only a limited number of adults...payments to encourage abortions."⁵

In 1971, Edgar Chasteen, a board member of Zero Population Growth, wrote The Case for Compulsory Birth Control.

In 1973, Roe v. Wade, provided "one reasonable solution to population control.⁶

On August 27,1990, ABC's Good Morning America 'interviewed photographer/author Peter Beard regarding human and animal populations in East Africa. "More food means more people," Beard said. "That's a quote from Norman Borlaug, the famous expert on world population. When you have massive starvation like you have in many countries in East Africa...the worst thing that you can do is to prop up the situation with food." However Beard had great compassion for African crocodiles, saying, "Crocodiles are 170 million years old; they represent evolution better than any other creature I can think of. They're highly intelligent, great sense of smell, hearing, everything you can imagine. They're resilient, they're fantastic." According to Beard, man is "the most dangerous animal of all...[because of] selfish population excesses."⁷

In 1991, the United Nations issued a document for the International Conference on Population and Development to be held in Cairo. The major thrust of the section on "Gender Equality, and Empowerment of Women" is to level the natural complementarity between man and woman in marriage, and replace it by government schemes that make men and marriage largely unnecessary. Dr. Allan C. Carlson translates this into a more honest image: "the state seeks to construct a 'mother-child-state' family system to replace the natural family, forming a kind of government harem, achieved through the massive subsidy of non-marital childbearing and the heavy taxation of families based on marriage."⁸

In 1992, former World Bank President Robert S. McNamara said that the world population was growing out of control. He stated that we "may well destroy the world environment, undoing decades of economic and social progress." McNamara proposed that the World Bank finance contraceptives for every country and that governments make sure people use them. He proposed that the UN Population Fund monitor each country to make sure that people aren't having more children than they are permitted under the plan. The "proposal" became reality in 1996 when President Clinton signed Executive Order #12852 to create the Council on Sustainable Development. This council is to advance an aggressive "family planning" agenda to reduce the world's population (this always includes abortion-on-demand), monitor population growth, and call for "tolerance" and "diversity" (code words 'in the past for promotion of homosexuality).⁹

So much for "right to privacy." So much for "choice."
Are people the problem?
Do we need to fear disaster because there will be too many mouths to feed?
Is mandatory abortion, contraception and sterilization necessary?

Consider the following---

A. In 1991, various estimates placed the population of Nigeria, West Africa at somewhere between 112 and 123 million. That was forecast to increase 500% 'in the next 50 years. The U.S. Agency for International Development and the World Bank pressured the Nigerians to implement population control programs. Planned Parenthood pushed for legal abortion. In November of 1991, the Nigerian government carried out a census - the first accurate account in 20 years. The borders were closed for three days. Work places, stores and schools were closed. Everyone was told to stay home for three days. The census-takers went out into the country. The numbers were totaled in March of 1992. How many people were living in Nigeria? The official count was 88.5 million-a far-cry from 123 million.¹⁰

B. Dennis Avery, director of the Center for Global Food Issues at the Hudson Institute says, "Biotechnology - including the genetic engineering of higher yielding, pest resistant rice, com, vegetables and other crop plants and the widespread adoption of modem farm methods that conserve sod and water resources - will give us the opportunity to banish hunger from even the poorest nations in the Third World. This is not a pipe-dream."¹¹

C. Julian Simon, a senior fellow at Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, doesn't buy the starvation scares. "Apocalypse has a lot of psychological attraction," he notes. Simon believes that current technology - if used properly - can produce adequate food far into the future. While about 14.5% of the globe's people are short of food, that's a sharp decrease from a quarter-century ago, when nearly a third lacked enough food. Moreover, in developing countries, eight of ten have adequate diets, vs. only 64% among 1970's lower population. Simon offers to bet as much as $100,000 that key life indicators such as food supply, life span and natural resources will continue to get better or cost less.¹²

D. The entire world population could be housed in the state of Texas. If you convert the 262,000 square miles of Texas into square feet (multiply by 5,280 feet per mile twice) and divide by the world's population estimated at 5.6 billion, one finds there are more than 1,300 square feet per capita. A family of five could comfortably co-occupy more than 6,500 square feet of living space.¹³

E. A nation's economic system is a key factor in determining its wealth or poverty - niot the number of people living in the nation. Singapore, for example, has 12,303 people per square mile, yet it is one of the most prosperous Asian nations. India, with a population of 683 per square mile, is poverty-stricken. Why is there such a difference between Singapore and India? Singapore adopted a free market system while India is a socialist nation discouraging job creation.

F. Total fertility rates 'in several European nations have fallen to new all time low levels. Russia's birth rate has fallen below the country's death rate. China's fertility level dropped below replacement level in 1992. The number of deaths in Japan are expected to exceed the number of births by the year 2006. Most developed countries have achieved fertility rates of under 2.2 children.¹⁴

G. The idea that growth is continuous is an unproven theory. Epidemics, wars, disasters and changes in human behavior patterns all affect population growth. Instead of heralding expected increases as a sign of progress due to the drop in mortality rates, many writers use anticipated growth to provoke fear.¹⁵

H. The family as a basic pattern of social organization can be found in all healthy human communities. Anthropologist George Murdock, in his classic cross-cultural survey, Social Structure, found the institution of marriage "in every known human society," with the only major variation being the choice between monogamy and polygamy." Also universal, he said, was "a division of labor by sex," rooted in the biological differences between men and women in reproductive functions but extending as well to production and consumption roles.¹⁶

I. "The family has always been the cornerstone of American society," said Ronald Reagan. "Our families nurture, preserve and pass on to each succeeding generation the values we share and cherish, values that are the foundation for our freedoms. In the family, we learn our first lessons of God and man, love and discipline, rights and responsibilities, human dignity and human frailty. Our families give us daily examples of these lessons being put into practice."

Lessons From History

The Greeks were committed to building the ideal society. The basic philosophy of Greece was, "Man is the measure of all things. Man, not the gods, the relative, not the absolute." Reason was worshipped and the human mind was supreme. Only the strong survived in Greece. Deformed or weak were hurled from cliffs or abandoned to die. Athenians had tax-financed medicare. The government became a bureaucracy bound in red tape and taxes. There was even a tax on tax receipts.¹⁷

In early Rome, fathers were respected as the head of the family. Education of children was the responsibility of the parents and, in time, strong Roman families produced a strong nation. The empire was united. As Roman families prospered, it became fashionable to hire educated Greeks to care for the children. Greek philosophy, with its humanistic and godless base, was soon passed on to Roman families. Women demanded more rights and, in order to accommodate them, new marriage contracts were designed. By the first century A.D. the father had lost his legal authority. It was delegated to the village, then to the city, then to the state, and finally to the empire. Citizens complained about housing shortages, soaring rents, polluted air, crime, and the high cost of living. Unemployment was a problem. To solve it, the government created civil service jobs, including health inspectors and tax collectors. In the final days, Rome tolerated all religions except Christianity.¹⁸

A Lesson From Present Day

When pro-life and family representatives from Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda met at a Nairobi conference early in 1994, they came to the following conclusion: Africa and Kenya are great land masses which can easily sustain more people than at present. The myth of overpopulation is the greatest hoax and lie of the century. We reject the lie as a mythical monster that does not exist. Kenya looks to a bright future because of the dynamism, energy and hope of its youth, who are the heirs of the nation. The greatest resources of Africa and Kenya are its own people.

...U.S. Aid for International Development, U.N. Fund for Population Control, International Planned Parenthood, and the World Bank, by pumping millions of dollars into population control in Africa and Kenya, prey upon the people like hungry scavengers. The government misjudges the situation by attacking babies instead of attacking its own mismanagement, ineptitude, corruption, greed, shortsightedness, and its failure to exploit and develop the natural resources which are so profuse and abundant in this vast continent.

...We request that contraceptive imperialism by international agencies be stopped immediately and that this new form of colonialism be buried as a defunct mistake in history.¹⁹

(There's more to the article. Click link above for the rest and an incredible list of linked sites.)

SOURCES

1. "What's Wrong with the United Nations' Definition of Family?" by Allan C. Carlson, Ph.D., The Cairo Examiner (published by the Population Research Institute), Autumn 1994; p. 12.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. "Are People the Problem?" by Tim Stafford, Christianity Today, October 3, 1994; p. 46.
5. Family Planning Perspectives, October 1970.
6. Justice Potter Stewart in The Washington Times after acquiescing in the Supreme Court decision.
7. Population Research Institute Review, January/February 1991; p. 12.
8. Carlson, Cairo Examiner, p. 14.
9. Concerned Women for America, October 1996.
10. Celebrate Life!News, June 1992, reprinted in September/October 1995.
11. Right To Life of Greater Cincinnati, March 1994.
12. "Fewer Are Starving as More Live Longer," by John Omicinski in the Des Moines Sunday Register, December 1, 1996.
13. Cairo Examiner, p. 1.
14. Ibid., p. 3.
15. "Five Lessons in Population," Cairo Examiner, p. 7.
16. Carlson, Cairo Examiner, p. 13.
17. The Rebirth of America, Arthur S. DeMoss Foundation, 1986; p. 144,
18. Ibid., p. 143-144.
19. Right To Life of Greater Cincinnati, March 1994.